


hold your breath (count to ten)

by Yuu_chi



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Brief Trespasser spoilers, Canon Compliant, Character Study, Introspection, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-27
Updated: 2015-10-27
Packaged: 2018-04-28 12:05:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,366
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5090075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yuu_chi/pseuds/Yuu_chi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A lesson in the loves of Dorian Pavus.</p>
            </blockquote>





	hold your breath (count to ten)

Dorian’s first love goes to his mother.

Soft hands in his hair when he’s tired but cannot sleep, soothing papercuts and sidewalk nicks, the edges of her smile when she says _well done Dorian_ or _you tried so hard, didn’t you?_

She’s the Minrathous sunset in the summer, the cool night air outside his window. Familiar, comfortable, and even as a child with no words with in himself he’s so very glad to be her son.

(it’s a love that never leaves him, even when he’s thirty-two and standing before her coffin with lilies wilting in his hand and a lump in his throat.)

.

Dorian’s second love is a lesson in realization.

It’s being too young to understand but old enough to be swept away in it all; sneaking out windows and cutting lessons early, sweet hand holding and chaste lips on his own as they hide themselves behind locked doors and towering walls even as Dorian is not quite sure why.

The other boy is sixteen to his fourteen and Dorian sees the world in his eyes, trusts every word that comes from between his lips, and for the first time in his tiny, tiny life he loses himself in the feeling of another person entirely.

It ends as all things do for Dorian; suddenly and painfully and setting a precedent for the rest of his life.

Dorian is as confused as he is hurt and he’s too young to know, really, why the hand he was holding pulled from his own, but he learns about the secrets that replace it.

And those secrets follow him always.

.

Dorian’s third love is loss.

Dorian is older this time and when he falls for another student beneath his patron it is anything but innocent. He gives all of himself away between one heart beat and the next; would have done anything he was asked without question.

When he’s pressed against a door and feels a hand slide down his stomach he allows it, allows the other boy to whisper _I’m going to touch you now_ and there is no question to his words and Dorian lets him, lets him take him in ways Dorian has never let anybody before.

There are bruises in his skin that are too dark to be truly benign but Dorian tells himself otherwise and if there are nights when he’s handled too rough, can feel breath shaking against his throat that has more to do with fear than arousal, Dorian does not let himself read into it.

He’s helplessly gone on it all, on _him,_ and Dorian knows by now that in Tevinter men who are drawn to other men keep it behind closed doors, but there’s a part of him, achingly earnest and proud to be worth the affection he’s been given, that wants it to be otherwise.

One night Dorian gets carried away in the hands in his hair, the movement above him, all the dark skin going flush with heat, the feelings of _this_ and _always_ and _yes_ burning in his chest like the fire he sometimes holds in his palms and it bursts from him before he can stop it; quiet as it is true and _I love you_.

Everything goes still – and then it’s cold and Dorian is alone in the bed as the door closes.

(two weeks later Dorian stands as a witness as the same man who took from him all he had to give takes himself a wife instead.

It’s the start of Dorian’s drinking.)

.

Dorian’s fourth love is silence.

(skin tan like fine whiskey, cheekbones shaded, lips curl when he smiles.)

He feels like he might drown in the sheer force of his want but he keeps the words off his lips and his smile tight. He does not let himself linger on the touches that burn at his skin, does not let himself hope when he feels eyes tracing along his spine.

(Dorian is too young to be so old.)

.

Dorian’s fifth love is the bottom of a bottle.

It’s the emptiness in his head that matches the emptiness in his heart, learning to take pleasure and nothing else from the hands on his skin, the men he takes to his bed.

He treats his reputation as a game and basks in the gazes that follow him when he walks, the way half a dozen men perk up the moment he struts into one of the taverns in the slums. He enjoys this, _loves this_ , and he never lets anybody forget the name Dorian Pavus.

(his hands shake now, and Dorian learns that the quickest way to steady them is with a glass in his fingers and liquor burning its way down his throat.)

.

Dorian’s sixth love is the sea.

It makes him terribly sick, but so far the same can be said of all his loves, so it’s nothing new.

He hates the waves that rock the ship something fierce, hates the salt in the air, hates the way that he can squint into the horizon for hours on end and still see nothing but endless sea. He can’t sleep, cannot possibly eat for the queasiness in his stomach but, _but –_

There is no blood here, no closed doors and whispers. There is no disappointment, no pain, just Dorian and all this blue.

(and slowly, somewhere deep inside where the salt in the air cannot sting his wounds, Dorian begins to heal.)

.

(Dorian’s seventh love and his eighth both go to Tevinter; nameless things, like walking down crowded streets and a desert bite to city winds.

He’s glad to be free – he’s glad, he’s glad, he’s glad – but the ache in him does not leave.

He bundles them together and calls his love homesickness.)

.

Dorian’s ninth love is fear.

No –

Dorian’s ninth love is _terror_.

It’s staring at angry holes in the sky and being less afraid than he is of the angry hole in Ronan’s hand that he knows would never hurt him. It’s walking the Fade, being called by his father’s name, and only feeling his breath go cold when he realizes he’s left the Fade alone, that Ronan is not at his back.

He does not call his ninth love by its name – Ronan Lavellan, the Inquisitor, the Herald of Andraste – because to name a fear is to give it power and Dorian has never been so scared of anything in his life.

He’s scared of the empty sheets beside him in the morning, he’s scared of the look in Ronan’s eye and the blood on his face, he’s scared of the dark lines that are slowly slithering up Ronan’s arm even though he knows Ronan doesn’t think he’s noticed.

(but he has. Dorian has.)

Dorian’s ninth love is knowing that his heart, that has always been fragile, is just one more crack off breaking entirely. Dorian’s ninth love is knowing that it is much too late to stop it anyway.

Dorian’s ninth love is the way he knows it will crash and burn.

.

Dorian’s final love is endless.

It’s white hair like starlight and dark skin on darker nights, holding Ronan on days when his arm hurts for all that it is lost. It’s being thankful, so, so thankful, for the hand he no longer has to hold.

It’s pressing kisses to a forehead that wrinkles its way through sleep and knowing that although they have come out of this broken, that Ronan is no longer whole, not just in his body but in his soul, that they get an _after_.

And Dorian’s heart trembles along the fracture lines that have been taped back together but never healed and he is thankful for each and every one;

He is thankful for his first that gave him joy, for his second and third that gave him pain, for his fourth that taught him the power of quiet, his fifth that still makes his hands shake sometimes, his sixth that was the one to give him his seventh, his eighth – he is thankful for his ninth that has become _this_.

And Dorian Pavus has loved long and he has loved deep and he, this is, he has become –

 _Endless_.

 


End file.
